RE: User agent capabilities [was Agenda

I agree that I think we have an open issue.

Currently, conformance is based on teh checkpoints. I woulod be leaving this
stuff in the techniques. The missing link is whether we are assuming a
browser set that supports longdesc. The other missing bit is that i should
have been more explicit in saying that this technique will satisfy the
checkpoint, for the given set of technologies.

So we document what we think is the state of play when we get to Rec, and
that
a)allows people to use the giudelines for general accessibility
b)allows people who are only looking for a particular user segment to know
what bits they still need to use and what bits of accessibility they are just
going to ignore.

Or we decide that techniques are normative (but that means we have to send
them through the Rec process too)

chaals

On Fri, 8 Dec 2000, Cynthia Shelly wrote:

  have we decided that the techniques are non-normative?  I think we still
  have an open issue on whether the technology-specific parts of the
  guidelines are non-normative "techniques" or normative "technology-specific
  checkpoints".  I, for one, strongly believe that the technical sections need
  to be normative.

   -----Original Message-----
  From: Leonard R. Kasday [mailto:kasday@acm.org]
  Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 10:37 AM
  To: Charles McCathieNevile
  Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
  Subject: Re: User agent capabilities [was Agenda



  Charles,

  There's still something I don't get here.  The WCAG draft
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/ <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/>   still
  says that people will be able to use it to judge conformance.

  Now suppose I have a web page that has LONGDESC but no D links.  The way
  you've described it,  I don't see how I can figure out the conformance from
  the guidelines because LONGDESC isn't even in the guidelines.  It's in the
  techniques which are not normative.

  And even if we brought your statement into the guidelines, viz
  quote

  HTML: Use the longdesc attribute to link to a full description. This can be

  provided in the same page. This requires browsers that support longdesc, so

  does not work for (almost anything available today, but we probably want to

  have a way of saying this that future proffs us a bit). Alternatively, link

  a letter 'D' immediately after the object being described to the
  description.

  This works in anything. (because somewhere we have stated that we expect

  links to work in all browsers...)"

  unquote

  that doesn't say whether D is required.

  So how do we measure conformance?

  Len





  At 11:28 AM 12/8/00 -0500, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:


  No, I am after something a bit different.

  We say in the guidelines "provide functional equivalents that can be used in
  different circumstances - by people who are deaf, blind, unable to read huge
  slabs of text, ..."

  Then in the checkpoints we say "provide text equivalents for all non-text
  elements".

  (then in the glossary we say that non-text elements are ones that cannot be
  rendered as text - they do include ASCII art but may not include accessibly
  designed SVG images...)

  Then in the techniques we say:
  "HTML: Use the alt attribute to provide a short functional equivalent. This
  needs to allow the user to scan quickly through the page, so information
  that
  is more than a sentence or so should normally be a long description (see
  below).

  And somewhere further on (or maybe this is a checkpoint)...

  A long description must be provided for complex information presented in the
  a non-text element.

  HTML: Use the longdesc attribute to link to a full description. This can be
  provided in the same page. This requires browsers that support longdesc, so
  does not work for (almost anything available today, but we probably want to
  have a way of saying this that future proffs us a bit). Alternatively, link
  a letter 'D' immediately after the object being described to the
  description.
  This works in anything. (because somewhere we have stated that we expect
  links to work in all browsers...)"

  Does that make it clearer? I guess we will need to go a  few times around to
  get this sorted.

  Cheers

  Charles


  On Fri, 8 Dec 2000, Leonard R. Kasday wrote:

    Charles,

    Let me check if I understand what you mean with an example.

    Take LONGDESC for example.

    and consider a WCAG that
    1. omitted LONGDESC from the baseline requirement
    2. said "to accommodate users with user agents that support LONGDESC it is
    sufficient to use that that attribute to give a more detailed description"
    3. also said  "to accommodate users with agents that don't support
    LONGDESC, use a "D link" as follows etc..."

    Now, for purposes of discussion, please put aside for now whether we
    actually want to omit LONGDESC from the baseline, and also please also put
    aside whether the rest of this example is worded optimally or complete.

    I want to ask just this narrower question: is this the type of Guideline
    document you are advocating?

    Len

    p.s.

    I'd personally support that sort of document.  Then the only issue will be
    whether WAI will want to say anything anywhere about what sets of user
    agent capabilities might be assumed and how the guidelines filter thru
    those assumptions.


    At 03:36 PM 12/7/00 -0500, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
    >Actually, I think that it is a much lower priority work item for us to
  create
    >profiles of WCAG for different constraints provided by certain
  organisations.
    >It seems to me much more the job of whoever is placing the constraints to
    >demonstrate tht for their purposes a particular requirement of universal
    >accessibility is not relevant.
    >
    >For example, we could in principle assume that everyone in the world uses
    >iCab (the japanese version) with the speech and keyboard control systems
    >native to the Macintosh, and work out what are the requirements that we
  can
    >ignore, or can list the problems that occur, based on that. Essentially I
    >think we have a critical requirement to make one such decision: What is
  the
    >baseline requirements for a User Agent?
    >
    >Beyond this, we should be able to name the problems that each checkpoint
    >addresses. But there are limits to how far we can track each tool set and
    >which checkpoints are relevant to it.
    >
    >(For me this is in the same basket as setting policy. i.e. it belongs to
  the
    >people who are doing it.)
    >
    >Charles.
    >
    >On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Leonard R. Kasday wrote:
    >
    >   Another user agent issue I face is that it depends on the user group.
    >
    >   For example, if a business or agency provides its employess with user
    >   agents having certain capabilities, it doesn't have to worry about
  older
    >   user agents, for pages only used by those employees.   In other words,
  we
    >   can assume more for intranet pages than for internet pages.  (I'm
  dealing
    >   with this as we speak BTW).
    >
    >   I think this is yet another argument for having a document (or section
  of a
    >   document) that deals only with accessibility as a function of user
  agent,
    >   and omits "requirements" or "compliance".
    >
    >   Requirements for compliance should be in a different document (or
  document
    >   section), which takes into account the user population (e.g. public
  vs.
    >   employee) and factors against which there may be a tradeoff with
    >   accessibility (e.g. "essential purpose" ).
    >
    >   I think this will save time in the long run, since we'll otherwise
  have
    >   perpetual arguments due to different people having different
  situations in
    >   mind.
    >
    >   Len
    >

    --
    Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
    Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at
  Temple
    University
    (215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
    http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday
  <http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0>
  mailto:kasday@acm.org <mailto:kasday@acm.org>

    Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
    http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ <http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/>

    The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant:
    http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/
  <http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/>




-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
September - November 2000:
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Received on Friday, 8 December 2000 13:55:54 UTC